Your correspondent has been summoned, at some inconvenience, to a Soho press conference at which a streaming service of dubious distinction announced a nine-part dramatisation of a team-building awayday that took place, to the nation’s lasting shame, on Tuesday the 12th of November 2019. The subject of this epic is the annual retreat of Blakely’s, a manufacturer of ball bearings in Tewkesbury, whose eleven employees were conveyed to a former Cold War bunker in the Forest of Dean for a day of trust falls and ‘honest feedback’ that concluded with two resignations, one broken wrist and a written apology to the Ministry of Defence. Priya Menon, the streaming giant’s UK content director, described the events as ‘a national reckoning with middle management’. Sharon Vetch, who broke her wrist on the third trust fall, learned of the production when her daughter sent her a TikTok.
The day itself, as nobody involved remembers it
The awayday was organised by Blakely’s human resources manager, Derek Pugh, who had read a book about Viking leadership and booked the bunker at £47 per head. The morning’s proceedings comprised a trust fall that went awry when Gavin Lole, 58, refused to catch anyone on the grounds that he had been employed by the firm for 34 years and was not about to start now. The afternoon was given over to ‘honest feedback’, in which staff were invited to write down what they truly thought of one another on laminated cards. Nine of the eleven cards contained the same observation about Derek Pugh, which cannot be printed here for legal reasons but rhymes with ‘prat’. Your correspondent, who was not present, has nevertheless formed a strong opinion on the matter.
An apology to the Ministry of Defence
At four o’clock, two participants discovered a locked steel door and, believing it to be part of the exercise, removed it with a fire extinguisher. Behind the door lay a room containing a civil defence radio set from 1983 and a laminated instruction card. The group took the card as a souvenir, apparently under the impression that it was a certificate of completion. The Ministry of Defence, which still owned the bunker, wrote to Blakely’s in January 2020 requesting the card’s return. Blakely’s replied that it had been ‘lost in a team-building context’. The drama’s writers, in a flight of fancy that your correspondent finds frankly admirable, have expanded this incident into a four-episode arc involving a Russian spy, played by Toby Anstis.
What the participants are getting, and what they are not
Each of the eleven participants has been offered £250, a preview of the boxset and a non-disclosure agreement. Six have signed. Gavin Lole has not, and has instead written to his MP, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Tewkesbury Herald, which ran his letter under the headline ‘BALL BEARING FIRM STAR IN NETFLIX SHOW’. Sharon Vetch’s wrist, now plated with surgical steel, has been written into the script as a cliffhanger at the end of episode six. She was not consulted. ‘I’d have said no,’ she told your correspondent, ‘I’d have said no for free.’ The remaining four participants have not been traced, despite the efforts of a private investigator hired by the production company, who spent three weeks in Tewkesbury and returned with a photograph of a cat.
The reviews, when they come
The Awayday airs on the 4th of March 2027. The Guardian has called it ‘a tender portrait of the British workplace’. The Telegraph has called it ‘woke nonsense about trust falls’. The actual Blakely’s staff watched the first episode in the canteen and turned it off after twenty minutes, citing ‘a lot of shouting’ and ‘that woman from the bakery who left in 2018’. Derek Pugh, now working in logistics in Evesham, has observed that the actor playing him is ‘too tall’. The bunker, which became a wedding venue in 2022, has reported a 40% rise in bookings and has increased its prices accordingly. Your correspondent, having attended the press conference with a small sherry, and having subsequently repaired to the bunker for a further small sherry, finds herself in a curious position. She has not seen the programme, and indeed has been reviewing a Danish series about a ferry for the past eight episodes, under the mistaken impression that it was the drama in question. The ferry, it must be said, was magnificent. But the awayday, as described, sounds rather good. One almost wishes one had been there. One is glad one was not. The weather, as ever, is closing in.
